Häufig gestellte Fragen
What matters most in a variant configurator for furniture?
What is decisive is a rule-based logic that validly combines dimensions, materials, fittings and design variants and automatically derives consistent bills of materials and work plans from them, instead of merely mapping sales options. Industry ERPs for the furniture industry such as COBUS, MODUS Furniture or VlexPlus rely on variable bills of materials and configuration rules for this, generating work steps, pricing and sales texts from the configuration. Ideally, the configurator accesses the same data as design engineering, so that sales, CAD and production do not have to be maintained separately. The specific implementation varies depending on product type, variant depth and the degree of customising of the respective system.
Which CAD/CAM interfaces should a furniture ERP support?
The focus is on connections to industry-typical design and carcass planning tools such as imos (iX CAD), Cabinet Vision and AutoCAD, from which geometries, bills of materials and drilling patterns are transferred to the ERP. Via such interfaces, bill of materials information can be transferred automatically to the ERP or PPS system, with the handover usually being flexibly configurable. Also important are connections to the machine controls of panel dividing saws, CNC machining centres and edge banders, as well as feedback via BDE/MDE (production and machine data capture). Which interfaces are actually needed depends on the machine park and the manufacturing depth of the business.
How does an ERP support panel optimisation and reduce waste?
Furniture ERPs couple order and bill of materials data to cutting and nesting software that arranges components on panels in such a way that as little material as possible is lost. Well-optimised layouts often achieve a material yield of around 85 to 95 percent in practice, while unoptimised cutting can be significantly below that; waste thus often falls from around 15 to 25 percent to under 10 percent. Offcuts and waste can be managed as remnant quantities and reused for subsequent orders. The achievable figures depend on part geometry, panel formats and grain-direction requirements.
What does the EUDR mean for furniture manufacturers and what role does the ERP play?
The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) also covers furniture and requires proof that the wood processed does not originate from land deforested after 31 December 2020, including geocoordinates of origin and a due diligence statement. Following the postponement decided at the end of 2025, the obligations apply to large companies from 30 December 2026 and to small and micro enterprises from 30 June 2027. An ERP supports these requirements via supplier and material master data, proofs of origin, risk assessments and audit trails. The exact implementation effort depends on company size and position in the supply chain.
How do ERP systems help with FSC and PEFC documentation?
For FSC and PEFC labels, every company in the product chain must hold its own Chain of Custody certificate (CoC), which documents the path of the wood from the forest to the end product. In practice, traceability is managed either via physical segregation of materials or via the percentage method, which requires clean quantity and batch management. An integrated ERP can separate certified and non-certified stock, store certificate data against material and supplier master data and document the quantity flows for audits. This reduces duplicate maintenance compared with separate spreadsheets, and evidence can be provided more quickly.
Industry ERP or standard system - which suits furniture manufacturers better?
Industry solutions for the furniture and wood industry cover functions such as timber lists, cutting and panel optimisation and CAD/CAM integration as standard, so typical manufacturing problems are solved without elaborate in-house development. Standard ERPs such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or abas offer a broad base but often have to be supplemented with partner solutions or customising for the variant world of furniture manufacturing. The decision depends on variant depth, the machine park, internationalisation and the existing IT landscape. A pragmatic selection starts with a requirements list, a workshop-based vendor comparison and ideally a pilot implementation in one plant.